This is precisely why in corporate brainstorming or “blue sky thinking” sessions half the participants can feel disengaged, frustrated and hate every minute whilst the other half feel anxious, uncomfortable and hate every minute.

But everyone carries on regardless and toes the line.

You might have to spend hours listening to the loudest speakers in your group telling you how wonderful their ideas are. It’s likely you’ll conform. It’s likely your brain will take the path of least resistance and will stay in it’s functional fixedness, chugging along the same tracks it usually takes to think of things rather than being fired up to take an unusual neural pathway to somewhere else.

It’s all too easy to get swept along with everyone else (particularly if you’re the shy retiring type) in a group — but what if you actually happen to be one of the loud talkers? There will be times when you get carried along by your own steam. Afterwards you’ll reflect and realise opportunities were missed.

If you’re facilitating a brainstorming session you may later come to regret that although it seemed productive at the time, in reality you have ended up producing “more of the same.” It takes a special kind of facilitator to appreciate the difference between flip charts and whiteboards packed by a volume of “ideas” and perhaps fewer, but seriously rich ideas validated on two important grounds — 1) that you feel heart, mind, body and soul are right for you or your company and 2) that you can confidently take forward to validate in your chosen marketplace.

Competition — win/lose situations rather than being allowed to progress at your own rate

Over control — being told what to do

Pressure — being aware of others’ expectations

Time — our cultural perceptions and associations with time

Sounds horribly like a corporate brainstorming session doesn’t it? There’s no surprise in appreciating the factors which kill creativity in children apply to adults too — but what are the alternatives?

Athletes and performers experience what they call the “white moment” which is being in a state when everything flows. It clicks. Everything feels harmonious. You lose track of time or it appears to slow down or go super fast.

This is no-mindedness rather than no-consciousness. Your mind is free. Clear. You’re just doing it. You’re intuitive at this point. This isn’t the same as doing tasks on autopilot, which can be numb repetition. Everyone has their own activity where they feel zen like. For some it’s going for a run, for others it’s cleaning, driving in the dark or taking a shower.

Christopher Bergland’s book “The Athlete’s Way” outlines his theory that it’s the vagus nerve which keeps cortisol low and acetylcholine which calms the parasympathetic nervous system — which is what give us grace under pressure. Bergland thinks creating superfluidity probably lies in engaging all four brain hemispheres along with the vagus nerve.

Firing new ideas is all about connectivity. In our brains and in our external environment, when we work with others to find new meaning to something. Any exercise which essentially involves individuals generating their own ideas and only then sharing them to enhance and develop them with others, works better.

This is a helpful aspect of “Brain Writing”, coined by UT Arlington Professor Paul Paulus where you’re writing your ideas first and talking second. You can write ideas on post-it notes for example and then vote for the best ideas before more structured discussions take place in a meeting.

Only after some space to generate your ideas independently would the group be facilitated through a number of further exercises to explore the ideas. Anna Craft’s “possibility thinking” might be incorporated and Brady Wilson’s three questions could be asked:

What’s possible here?

What matters most to me in this situation?

How might we…?

Ideally, to explore the task at hand you’d look for as many connections surrounding the ideas as possible. You could also include “Reverse Brainstorming” where you look for ideas to prevent your problem happening in the first place and “Imaginary Brainstorming” — adding imaginary elements of imaginary problems so you combine real and imaginary problems to explore what’s relevant.

It’s this aspect of finding different connections and exploring different approaches which will yield different results. Practical exercises spark this process and asking the right questions can help develop ideas, uncovering different layers within them. As Tony Robbins says:

If you’d like to find out more about how asking the right questions can help you take your powerful idea and unleash it on the world, my new programme, #JustOneIdeaToday could be for you. Find out more here: www.JustOneIdea.Today